You may have noticed that Twitter (are we calling it X? Is anyone?) has gone through some…uh…”changes” over the past year. And some of those have dramatically impacted how you can access your performance data. Over the last year, the Twitter (X?) Ads API and Basic APIs changed their permissions and access rules. Now that the dust has settled and we’ve had time to process the updates, here’s what happened and what your options are for getting your data
The Evolution of the Twitter API
For many years, we relied on the Twitter (X?) Ads API to access both paid and organic data for our clients. Then, Twitter (X?) decided to drop a bombshell – new Twitter handles would need to spend money on advertising before they could use the Ads API to get organic data. When we spoke with our development partner contacts at Twitter, their advice? Just spend more on ads.
However, as it often happens in the tech world, things took another twist this summer. Suddenly, the Ads API stopped providing Organic data even to handles that were advertising on Twitter. This API was fully closed to all handles (old, new, spending or not).
Enter the Twitter (x?) API v2.
Ya Basic. Twitter’s $100 Solution
The V2 API has multiple tiers of access (there’s a free one for just posting) and for $100 per handle per month, you can access the Basic Tier and actually get all of your tweet data.
Nerd note: The Basic Account access allows you to make 10,000 queries per day. If your handle posts about 30 tweets per day and you can query all posts for the first 30 days of their lifespan, you’ll end up making 9000 calls per month and be safely under the limit.
Does it work? Absolutely. This API has proven itself reliable, performant, and offers all the vital metrics and granularities that let you get insights into tweet performance and what’s driving it.
Ehh, we have 300 Twitter Handles. Can I get a bulk discount?
Meh. This is a lot of money for Twitter.
We’re not even sure how long we’ll still be on the platform. Our Social Team is focused on TikTok. We liked the data when it was free but…
Maybe you’re thinking “$100 per handle? That’s a bit steep!” For those who don’t require next-day data and have multiple handles to manage, there’s an old fashioned workaround. You can opt for the weekly upload ritual.
This involves downloading your Twitter data reports once a week, uploading them into your favorite analytics tool (may we recommend Pickaxe?), and voila! You’ll have daily granularity reporting for all your handles for all key metrics. Your dashboards will continue to function, and it all works like a charm.
But, there’s a catch – this process requires a bit of good old-fashioned human ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), not to mention the time commitment – we have found that many of our customers are fine with a weekly upload, but you may have more frequent data needs, in which case you’d have to increase the frequency of the process.
In Conclusion...
You’ve got a few options
1. Pay X the price of $100 per handle per month
2. Go big and get the $5k or Enterprise tier
3. Go old school human ETL and download your data
But those are just the options this month. Watch this space because at this rate, the whole thing could change again next week!
